[Grant F]

Hi all,

This is my first pic and posting to this forum, which I discovered via Mr Mullin's site. I work professionally as a pre-visualisation artist for Animal Logic in Sydney, Australia, mostly sitting in front of computers and designing fx shots and producing occasional matte paintings as well.

Despite producing art for a living I realise I've still got a lot to learn...so I find these types of forums great for absorbing/sharing information.

Painting is also my hobby...so below is a recent painting produced in my own time (a Saturday afternoon) using Photoshop. I utilise both photomontage techniques and painting...usually painting the underlying shapes and shading then filling it all in with texture.

Feel free to critique, and my apologies if there is no image present at all...this is my first post to this forum.


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Grant Freckelton
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Pre-visualisation Artist,
Animal Logic, Sydney, Australia.

[AcidDrone]

wow awsome texturing on the snake
nice to see a fellow australian on this board to

im not so good at critique though but I think it looks great.
the left leaf looks a bit blurry but im not sure if thats intentional or not.

[Affected]

I like the sense of space a lot, but the green fog seems to flatten it a bit. Somehow it feels odd to my eye. (I'm not kidding: I get this sense of slight pressure in my eye when I see some compositional thing I think should be different in a pic.)
Still, it's a great pic, I like the flowers a lot as well.

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Affected

Democracy is a lie

http://affected.xs.mw

[Frost]

Excellent work Grant! Welcome!

[Gordillo]

Simply awesome.I can't critique your picture,is absolutely cool!!.

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ALBERTO GORDILLO
[email protected]

[Thorn]

's good. Very, very good. Atmospheric. I like the red feather touch. Gives the character depth, like there's a story behind him/her. (Nice change too from the more usual 7 foot, demented , steroid popping action type characters).

[Jeezus]

Damn good! I like the feather..

[kos.mandis]

AAA!! Evil Lizard!
Great image, the only thing I can add (or remove) is that that leaf on the left is too much in our face, then again maybe not...

keep it up!

[Nightime]

Welcome !

Didn't Animal Logic do some work for the Matrix?

JJ

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JJ / Nightime

[Visigoth]

Holy franks and beans! =| *throws down his wacom pen again* -- Ah...Yet another artist blows me away...lol Great job on that picture...I like your style -- BTW -- I think the dust/fog adds depth.

~{V}~

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Oh god my eyes!

[sfr]

Very nice image! It has sort of a 3d look (maybe it's the sharp edges and textures combined with the deep black shadows that do it), but it's much more vivid than usual 3d images - interesting painting style...

You work at Animal Logic? I've heard of the company and I know quite little about the visual effects industry overall, so it must be quite famous then Welcome to the forum!

Saffron / Sunflower

[Loki]

Wow! Very freakin nice ...

So, Grant, if you work at Animal Logic, do you know Paul Kirwan then?

[Kindred]

That's freaking awesome, Grant.

The little details and texture are so neat.

Kindred

[Guy]

love the picture. the colours are good and so are the textures. personaly i like the leaf. it helps to add some depth to the piture. i dont see to many pics in here that have a forground. the dust looks good too, gives the pic some life, as if the lizard and/or his tail was moving along the ground throughing up some dust into the air.

i cant really think of anything that would need improvement. hope to see some more stuff

[sydneyshan]

Great to see a fellow Sydneysider here! As I recall Animal Logic did work for The Matrix, correct? Were you involved in any way with that?

I'll have to drop in sometime.

Re: the drawing- love the feather! Oh, I only just got it- the lizard isn't life-size, it's in a tunnel or something (I think the flowers threw me).

Welcome to the BB! looking forward to more paintings!

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***********
Shannon Murdoch
www.bounce.to/shan
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[Lemur-X]

Wow. That's the best 'Tribal Skink standing next to a soup-can' picture ever!

Nice....

--Lemur-X

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Enter the Lemur......

[synj]

you win, dude.

-synj www.synj.net

[n8]

yep...over here..!!!....i didnt realise there were so many sydney siders round here

[StrangeFate]

It's totally lovely, great, awesome, sweet

...some strange menacing things going on in that garden, i recommend to take the lawn mower and clear things out.

[Grant F]

Here's a follow up to a few of the comments!

Aciddrone: That's a skink, not a snake And the blurriness is quite intentional...attempting to get the effect of a 'macro' shot- a low depth of field.

Nighttime: Animal Logic did do work on the Matrix... the green cascading code was designed and developed at AL and most of the shots featuring the code were produced there.

I'm sad to say I had nothing to do with it- I started working there just as the Matrix production was starting to wind down.

sfr: I didn't realise AL was so well known It certainly is the best company of its type in Australia, and with the exception of Weta Ltd (kind of a highly specialised FX house) probably the most succesful FX house in the Southern Hempisphere. But enough with the rabid PR...I don't get paid for this stuff

Loki: No I don't know Paul Kirwan...he's not on the staff list nor has he worked here since I've been here..

Lemur-X: It's a can of Stagg's Chilli, not soup. Get your bar-codes right.

Overall... I liked the feather too! It was from my pillow, I scanned it in, bumped up the contrast, whacked it into a mask channel and painted in the light/colour/feather shaft.

His spear consists of a cotton bud stick and pin. They were both scanned in, regraded, positioned into the image and the transluscency effect was painted on.

The skink him/herself was sketched up then I researched a few herpetology sites and came across an appropriate image which was butchered for texture. The rest was just painted as I saw fit, with various filters/textures applied.

The whole thing is lit and graded using various adjustment layers in Photoshop and painting highlights on layers switched to 'Colour Dodge' and 'Soft Light' modes.

I'll stick another pic up in the near future!